Sunday Traveling

Sundays are always the worst. When I'm working Sundays either mean I have to leave to head back out of town or just the inevitable, that I have to actually go back to work tomorrow. The hardest is when I have to leave to go back to Charlotte for work. I don't know that people really understand how difficult working in the film business can be. Not only do we work a minimum of 65 hours a week, getting maybe 6 hours of sleep a night if we are lucky, we are usually going home every night to a bed that isn't ours and an empty place far away from our family. If we are lucky enough to be able to travel home on the weekends we spend an additional 8 hours during our weekend to drive home and back. Not to mention sometimes our travel time to work every day can be an hour there and back that is not included in our 65 hour work week. So travel and work included we can spend a minimum of 85 hours away. Most people spend 40 hours away, plus maybe 5 hours drive time a week and return home every night to their families and bed. We work twice as much in a week than most of work force. That is why we can work 6 months out of the year and take the rest of the year off. We've worked the same amount of hours in 6 months that most people do in an entire year! Granted, most of us don't only work 6 months out of the year though we work more like 9-11 months a year.

And people wonder why we have no lives, no time to spend our money and no time to take care of personal things like doctor visits. When we take a day off, we take it off without pay. There is no such thing as paid time off in our business and most people in the film business do not have the luxury of taking off just a few hours out of the day for a doctor appointment. If I have to go to an appointment, I must take the entire day off without pay. Needless to say with all the doctor appointments I have coming up, it will be virtually impossible for me to work. But since Marshall will be returning to work on Army Wives shortly after Homeland is over, we have decided that it would be best for me to just stay at home and take it easy. We are both concerned about this pregnancy and not having any answers as to what went wrong last time, we aren't taking any chances. We wanted to make sure that during my 3rd trimester I was able to focus on all my doctor appointments and my health and the babies and doing so meant I would be unable to work.

But for now, I must still work until Homeland is over. Maybe one day I will find a better career that allows me do to something I love and not have to travel all the time for work, but for now I will stick to working on Homeland half the year and enjoying the other half of the year home. Since I was at home, I was able to utilize the time to catch up on some of the personal things that tend to get neglected when I'm away for work. I took care of some bills and Marshall and I sat down and booked our "Baby Moon" to New York. Due to the cost of airfare, we decided to leave on Black Friday and return on November 28th. We had thought about staying an entire week, but decided that 5 days in NY should be sufficient and then we would like to have some time at home in Wilmington together before Marshall has to leave for work.

Mom had invited us over for lunch and to watch the Panther game so we headed over there after booking our travel plans. We decided to drive separately so I could head to Charlotte after the game from there. Lunch was great despite the Panther's losing. We snapped this week's baby bump photo in my Mom's yard before I hugged everyone goodbye and begrudgingly headed to Charlotte. When I got to my apartment I finished up some last minute work to get ready for tomorrow, called Marshall to tell him goodnight and got ready for bed. I have to be at work at 6:30am and pregnancy and early mornings do not go well together. I can use all the sleep I can possibly get if I want any attempt at functioning that early in the morning these days. For the most part my fatigue is better, but I still require at least 8 hours of sleep a night and 8 hours is virtually impossible to come by Monday thru Thursday nights. At least the end is near. Only a few more weeks of season 2 left!